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Taoyuan International Airport to adopt new style for signs

Taoyuan International Airport (or “Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport” as it is called in Taiwan’s official Chinglish form) will be replacing its signage, adopting a new color scheme and typeface.

Currently, the signs in the airport have a black background and yellow or white letters.

The new signs will be modeled after those in the Hong Kong International Airport, with white letters on a blue background. But signs for facilities such as restrooms and restaurants will have white letters on a dark red background. (Perhaps like these?)

Taiwan will also duplicate Hong Kong’s choice of font face: Fang Song (f?ng-Sòngt? / ???). One of the reasons for this is that some Chinese characters — such as for yuán (?) and guó (?) — appear similar if viewed from a distance, according to the president of the Taoyuan International Airport Corp. “Passengers can clearly see the words on the [new] signs even if they view them from 30 meters away,” he added.

The new signs will start to go up in August, with the change scheduled to be complete by the end of 2012.

I’ve made some samples (which, by the way, contain both ? and ?) in three typefaces to help illustrate the look of Fang Song. Sorry not to have the right color scheme.

By the way, the contrast between the traditional and simplified versions of the t? of f?ng-Sòngt? (??? / ???) is a good illustration that to the untrained eye the conversion from one system to another is not necessarily self apparent.